Hallelujah
by blockedthewriter
Summary: Kenny's truck. It's where they spend most of their time together: getting high, getting drunk, making water-bongs, cruising for chicks, almost touching dicks—but Ike doesn't think about that last part. UST. Friendship.


"Hey, are Stan and Kyle fucking yet?" Kenny asks, passing Ike a joint. Ike shrugs, smoke unfurling around his head as he stares out of the window of Kenny's pickup truck. It's been a running joke between the two of them for almost as long as they've been hanging out. Kenny is tempted to start a betting ring at school for how soon and which one of them will top. Ike is tempted to throw up. He doesn't want to imagine Kyle fucking anybody.

Ike passes the joint back to Kenny, tipping his head back and watching the smoke as he exhales.

"Wish we had some booze," Kenny says, and Ike does too. Alcohol makes Ike feel more relaxed than weed—not that he's ever all that high strung—but besides, pot has that irritating side-effect of giving Ike random boners—at least, when he ingests it anyway. Ike shivers, remembering the time he and Kenny made pot-infused peanut-butter. Looking back, he figures it could have ended up a lot worse than the two of them almost touching dicks and fucking Bebe.

Kenny opens the car door without warning, swinging himself out and around and into the back of his truck. Ike glances back before shrugging, and figuring, what the hell. He climbs into the back too. Kenny's already lying down, staring up at the dark sky and puffing smoke rings. Ike still can't figure out how to do it, which bothers him more than it should, really. They're just smoke rings. Not a masterpiece.

Ike follows Kenny's lead, and lays down beside him, so close that their shoulders bump but neither of them really care. Cartman would call them both faggots if he saw, but Kenny stopped giving a shit about what Cartman thought a long time ago, and Ike never cared about the fat-ass to begin with.

Besides, they're not _really_ faggots.

Ike likes picking up girls with Kenny, likes rolling his eyes when Kenny uses cheesy pick-up lines but somehow makes them actually work. He likes the shock on their faces too, when they ask Ike how old he is and he tells them fifteen. Ike thinks that he must look older than fifteen, especially for them to be so shocked, but Kenny says he could pass for younger. He is a little short for his age, still waiting around for that final growth spurt. It's maddening, the way Kenny is already pushing five-eleven and Ike is lucky if he can manage five-five.

"Hey, Ken, so about that night with Bebe—" Ike starts, finally bringing up what's really been on his mind. He's not sure what he's even getting at by bringing it up, really. It's not like Ike could really date-_date_ Bebe anyway. She's already a senior in high school, and Ike's only a Sophomore, and he's only just that because he started kindergarten a year early. It's not that Kenny's dating Bebe either, least, not as far as Ike knows. And Ike generally knows. Kenny tells him those things.

"Hm?" Kenny says, pausing for a moment, as if he doesn't remember. Ike can't tell if he's faking him out or not.

"Ohhhh! _That_night!" The blond says suddenly, as if he's just remembered. Ike is beginning to feel like Kenny's fucking with him.

Kenny laughs. "Dude, what about it?" Kenny says, and it really stumps him then. Ike isn't sure 'what about it,' either. So instead of trying to figure it out, he goes back to staring at the sky, trying to count the shiny little specks that some people tell him are stars.

Kenny can see so much of Kyle in Ike, despite their lack of blood relation. Maybe it's because they were both raised by Sheila, or maybe it's because Kyle has a way of rubbing off on people (no pun intended.) Whatever the reason, Ike definitely has that underlying sense of nervousness, the kind that makes him fidget with his hands when he doesn't know what to say.

"It's fine, ya know. Chill, dude. It doesn't make us fags." Kenny finally says, just to reassure him. He knows that's what Ike is really worried about. Kenny doesn't say how he wouldn't care if it did. What happened, happened, and if Kenny could go back and do it over, well then he probably _would_ touch dicks, just for the hell of it, and besides, if he's going to touch dicks with anyone, it might as well be Ike.

It's not even that Kenny's gay, just that he really just doesn't give a fuck anymore. He knows Ike is on his way to feeling that way too, beating Kenny to the punch by a few years.

"I wouldn't really care if it did, anyway," Kenny admits. Although explaining the situation to Kyle would be a doozy.

_Uh, sorry Kyle, but I sort of touched your littler brother—no, no! Good touch!—well he touched me too—like, we touched each other. No, no, we're not gay, we just—yes I know I'm about to be nineteen! Uh...fifteen? Dude, that's not illegal! Well, hey, he's probably like, nineteen in dog years, right?_

Then Kyle would probably hunt Kenny down and set him on fire.

Ike turns to him, giving him a funny look; Kenny changes the subject.

"Shouldn't we be gettin' you home? Don't you have homework or something?"

Ike shrugs. "I can't remember. I was asleep in my classes." He wonders how Ike does it. Kenny counts himself lucky that he'd even gotten as far as Sophomore year. School just wasn't for him. He figures it's just for different people, people like Kyle and Ike and Cartman, and even Stan. It's definitely for kids like Ike, kids who can sleep through their classes and somehow still ace them. Sometimes it bothers him, just a little. It makes him wonder why a genius like Ike would waste his time with someone like, well, Kenny.

"I think I'm gonna drop out," Ike says. To Kenny, it's both shocking and expected. He knows how much Ike hates school, and most of the people in it. Kenny feels like he should tell him to stay in school, but he doesn't, instead he says—

"Your mom's gonna flip shit." Ike laughs; shrugs.

"It's a waste of my time. Besides, I've been having some ideas." Kenny can imagine. He's sure Ike is going to be the next Mark Zuckerberg. Hopefully, less of an asshole.

Ike isn't so sure—about being less of an asshole, or about having enough talent to actually do something. He's good at programming, but he's not inventor-of-facebook good. Besides, Ike's a bit too much of a slacker to do much of anything. He's lucky if he manages to get to school fully clothed.

"I'm glad you bought this truck," Ike says. And he really is, even if it is kind of a piece of junk. There's blue paint peeling off from when Kenny attempted to paint it over a year ago, and one of the windows is completely duck-taped closed. It doesn't always start up right away either, but it doesn't bother them.

It's where they spend most of their time together—getting high, getting drunk, making water-bongs, cruising for chicks, almost touching dicks—but Ike doesn't think about that last part. Ike tells himself he doesn't even remember most of what happened, really. He assures himself that the memory is still hazy—from all the drugs and alcohol.

"We should do shrooms sometime." Kenny turns his head; laughs.

"You know, your brother would kill me if he ever found out we do this shit."

Ike snorts. "I'm not a kid." Technically, he still is. Ike is still a minor. Kenny, on the other hand, has been able to legally buy his own cigarettes for nearly a year. Maybe it's a little weird that they're friends. Who cares?

"You are to Kyle. You're his kid brother forever."

Ike knows. He lays there, silently bemoaning his fate. He almost wishes he could go back to days of "kick the baby." Ike wonders if Kyle knows he remembers that. He decides to bring it up the next time Kyle hassles him, telling him it's not a good idea to sneak out at one-thirty am on a school night. His parents are bad enough as it is. He doesn't need a geeky older brother compromising his time too.

"Nah, but shrooms look fucking fantastic. We should try it."

Kenny laughs again, happy and teasing. "I banged my first chick on shrooms."

Ike almost feels jealous. He hasn't banged any chicks yet. It's not for lack of trying, or even lack of looks, more so, for lack of height. Ike knows he doesn't need muscles to get chicks—Kenny doesn't have them—but he can't get chicks when half of them are taller than he is. Kenny might be thin, and even poor, but he's tall as fuck, and Ike still bitterly thinks that Kenny's gonna grow another few inches before he stops. Not to mention, Kenny's ridiculously hot—not that Ike thinks that. Of course, he can tell Kenny's handsome, even straight guys can tell that much. Ridiculously hot is just something he's heard girls—and Butters—say.

"Would you bang me if I was a chick?"

"Dude," Ike starts, and Kenny snickers, "Sick."

"Oh come on, I'd probably be ridiculously hot." For a split second, Ike seriously entertains the idea that Kenny can read his thoughts.

"C'mon, would you?" Ike pointedly ignores him. But Kenny doesn't just get pussy all the time by laying around—he's persistent.

"I bet my tits would be huge," he continues, baiting him. Kenny's really not sure what he's trying to accomplish by saying this. He doesn't like to think that far ahead, it takes the fun out of it.

"No way! Who says your tits would be huge?"

"It would fit my frame," Kenny says nonchalantly, shrugging like it makes all the sense it the world.

"You're all skin and bones! I call bullshit on you having big tits."

"I'm not talking like, circus tits or anything.. Just a nice set of triple f's..."

"Dude! Is that even a real size?" Kenny bursts into laughter. He has no idea. That's the beauty of bullshit—it doesn't always have to make sense.

"Nah, I'd probably have boobs like the same size as Bebe," Kenny finally relents.

Ike still thinks it's bullshit. Kenny isn't allowed to be hot as a hypothetical girl. He's already hot as an actual guy. Not that Ike thinks that—it's just what he's heard girls says.

"No fucking way, Bebe's got like double-d's!"

"Alright, damn! How small do you want my tits to be? What's wrong with big tits anyway? You're just jealous cause you'd have itty-bitty a cups!"

"I'd be at least a c!" Ike says defensively. What makes Kenny think he'd have small tits if he were a hypothetical girl?

"Look, I'm just basing this off of dick size. Okay? That's why I think it makes the most sense that..."

"Wait a fucking minute. You trying to say I have a small dick?" Ike remembers with a jolt that Kenny's actually _seen_ his dick. Somewhere in the back of his head, Ike feels a pang of hurt. It's not that he needs Kenny's approval, but Kenny's dick had been significantly bigger. That time. Not that he'd really looked. Just a glimpse, really.

"I'm just trying to say I have a big one." Was Kenny's dick that big? Ike hadn't exactly whipped out a ruler for measurements. Ike had always thought his dick was just fine. He'd always counted himself lucky for being circumcised. Uncircumcised dicks were weird. At least, that's what he'd heard Wendy say.

"You know what my dick's name is?" Ike sighed. This was going to go on forever. Kenny didn't even wait for a response this time.

"Titanic." Kenny laughs, waggling his eyebrows. "I was going to just name him Gigantor, but I thought that was too obvious. So I named it Titanic, like after—"

"The ship, yeah, I get it."

Kenny wonders what's crawled up Ike's ass and died. He asks him.

"Nothing." Kenny rolls his eyes. His mood swings remind him of Kyle. Ike doesn't have the flaring temper like Kyle, but rather prefers to sulk with the most disinterested, bored look he can muster. Kenny thinks it's hilarious.

A few moments pass in silence, and it's not exactly awkward—no, they've been friends too long for that—but a little unsettling; tense. Kenny can feel something awful radiating out from Ike in waves.

"Dude, I was just fucking. You'd totally have nice-sized b-cups. Like Wendy's tits. They're a nice size for her." Ike isn't sure what that's actually supposed to mean. Is it a backhanded compliment about the size of his dick? Is it Kenny's way of apologizing for being a jackass? Both, neither?

Whatever it is, it just pisses him off even more. Ike doesn't need pity compliments about the size of his dick. What kind of guy compliments another guy on his dick anyway? Grant it, Kenny hadn't exactly said, "nice dick" or anything, but jesus christ—this is getting too gay, isn't it?

Ike decides to stop thinking about the whole thing. Actually, he decides to stop thinking at all. It's easier said than done, really. Ike's got the kind of brain that's constantly buzzing—even when he's drunk and high, he can still spell words like hypothermia and he's still got enough sense and dexterity to text his brother and let him know he'll be home late, with perfect grammatical precision, no less.

Needless to say, when Ike tries to turn the whole thing off, it only gets worse. It's kind of like when someone tells you not to think of purple elephants, and for the next ten minutes all you can think of (and try not to think of) is a purple elephant. Ike's glad he doesn't have pyrokinetic abilities. He wouldn't mean to, but he'd probably accidentally set people on fire constantly, just because he'd be so fucking paranoid about accidentally thinking about someone he loved on fire, he'd end up constantly thinking about it. Ike's not sure if that really makes any sense.

He asks Kenny, just to be sure.

"Hey, what if I had pyrokinetic powers?" Ike ventures. Kenny laughs, but doesn't miss a beat.

"You'd probably set me on fire. Not literally, but, I'd be like, 'dude, don't think of me on fire,' and then you would, and bam, I'd be dead!"

He realizes that Kenny would probably be back the next day anyway. Ike takes comfort in the fact that if he ever did have pyrokinetic powers, at least Kenny would always be there for him, making it worse. Ike's starting to feel like things are getting gay again—and not even gay as in the sexual orientation—but gay as in pansy-ass flowers and rainbows and sunshine and my little pony and shit. Pretty much Butters, in a nutshell.

Kenny likes the way he and Ike can lay in the back of his truck in silence and feel totally chill. He also likes how they can interrupt the silence with weird questions like what if I had pyrokinetic powers or what if I died and didn't come back one day or what would happen if we just got in this truck one day and decided to drive out of South Park in a straight light until we ran out of gas and never looked back. Kenny especially likes talking about that last one. He likes thinking about leaving South Park. He wants to actually do it—and soon. There's not really anything left for him here—he's been working at the gas station for two years and he's still poor and his home is still a shit-hole.

To be honest, he's not really sure what's keeping him.

He tells himself it's not Ike, because really, it isn't—and even if it was, that'd be crazy. Ike and Kenny—they're just bros. Bros before hoes, yeah, but—

"Dude, remember when I couldn't inhale, and we used to just eat brownies all the time?" Kenny does. He remembers it well.

Kenny didn't even know how to make brownies before he'd met Ike, but now he's a pro. He makes them with nutella, with walnuts, with peanut-butter, with whatever. Kenny's pretty sure he could make brownies blindfolded out of rocks and dirt.

"Remember when we started putting it in fucking everything—and we had the butter with pot in it and you came home one day wondering why Kyle wasn't freaking out about finals and he was like, dude, why were you hiding butter in your room?"

Ike bursts into laughter and Kenny follows in suit. They laugh for a while, their voices bouncing off of trees and whispering away into the cool night air. Ike loves nighttime at South Park—it's one of the few times when the whole town is shrouded in quiet.

When they finally manage to catch their breath, a silence settles in, and the atmosphere becomes tense all of a sudden.

"Remember when I had to shotgun you when I was trying to teach you to inhale?" Ike does. He remembers the time their lips almost got a little too close, too. Thankfully, Kenny doesn't mention that part.

Kenny thinks about that part, though. He remembers blowing the smoke into Ike's mouth and trying to convince himself that guys shotgunned other guys all the time. This is one of the reasons Kenny is starting to think he might be bisexual. It's not that he wants dick in his ass or in his mouth or even that he really thinks about guys fucking or anything like that—only that, sometimes, he thinks about what would have happened if he'd accidentally closed the gap of space. He's glad he didn't. Ike was only fourteen and Kenny likes not being on fire—whether or not he would come back to life afterwards is besides the point.

"Ike, what's your favorite song?"

"Extraterrestrial, by Katy Perry." Kenny almost laughs, but for once, he's trying to be serious.

"Dude, come on, for real."

"I'm for serious. That song was pure lyrical genius. 'I'ma disrobe you, then I'ma probe you.' C'mon, you don't come up with lyrics like that without some serious talent."

Kenny laughs then, despite himself. He shoves Ike with his shoulder. Hard.

"What the fuck?" Ike says, turning to face him, indignant. He realizes too late that turning to face Kenny only leaves two inches between their noses and he can actually smell Kenny's breath. Ike's grateful that all he can smell is the marijuana.

"For real, what's your favorite song? This is important." Kenny can't really remember why it's important anymore. There had been a reason, at some point, but now all he can think about is how Ike still looks way too young for this to be appropriate.

Ike sighs. "You already know my favorite song."

Kenny has half a mind to punch him.

For some reason he starts thinking about Bebe and he remembers how great her tits must look tonight. He knows she's wearing that baby blue v-neck that pushes them together so they look perfectly round. He knows because he saw her earlier today and she asked him if he wanted to go roller-skating at this little place right outside of South Park. Kenny thought she was joking. He realized she wasn't after she explained a bit, but when he asked if Ike could come she'd given him a weird look. It was a look that said, "why are you still hanging out with that little kid?" Kenny's never hit a girl, but that look had made him want to punch her.

Maybe that's why he's thinking about that now. He feels like punching someone. Ike, or Bebe? He can't really remember anymore. He blames the weed.

"I've heard there was a secret chord..." Ike starts, and Kenny isn't sure what's happening.

"That David played and it pleased the lord..." Ike continues. He's not a very good singer, and he knows it. Ike's actually only ever sung in front of two people in his entire life, and Kyle hearing him sing had been an accident. That little creeper likes sneaking around the house in the night when Ike's in the middle of trying to be a broody teenager, and unfortunately, one of those nights he'd been singing and his door had been open just a crack. Ike had told Kyle with as much venom as he could muster that if he ever told anyone he listened to Dashboard Confessional he'd kill him and no one would ever find his body.

Kenny finally catches on, and rushes to keep the tune. "But you don't really care for music, do you?"

They carry the tune a few seconds longer, Kenny stumbling behind Ike by a few milliseconds, only half-remembering the words:

"It goes like this, the fourth, the fifth. The minor fall, the major lift. The baffled king composing Hallelujah..."

"We have the same favorite song, asshole," Ike huffs, trying to not feel like a woman for being angry that Kenny had forgotten that.

"Who says that's my favorite song?" Ike almost gets angry in a surge of Broflowski rage, but luckily he realizes Kenny is joking first.

"I don't know man, I think your right, Extraterrestrial is some real lyrical genius." They snort, and burst into laughter. It lasts far longer than it should, both because they're high and because they're happy.

"So that song is like, about a chick, right?" It reminds Kenny a little of domestic violence and the way that loving someone hurts just as much as it feels good.

Ike, on the other hand, has a much more well-thought interpretation.

"It's about King David from the Bible. David played his harp and it was soothing to King Saul and it literally 'pleased the Lord'." Ike has the nerve to make air quotes when he says this. Kenny resists the urge to tell him it makes him look like a pretentious asshole.

"Later when David is an adult and the King, he gives into temptation after seeing Bathsheba bathing on the roof. He sleeps with her, knocks her up, and then he secretly has her husband killed during a battle. This brings a God-induced shitstorm on the house of David. This pretty much breaks the throne by breaking David." Ike inhales deeply when he finishes, like maybe he'd forgotten to breath when he was speaking.

Kenny takes a moment to process everything before opening his mouth. A rare, but not unheard of occurrence.

"That's what I said, it's about a chick," Kenny continues, staring at his fingertips. He's got his arms completely outstretched above his head, and his hands kind of seem like they're disconnected from his body, like they're nameless shapes just floating about the atmosphere.

"It about how we all succumb to temptation and break the vows in relationships, and how love isn't really—"

"Dude, it's just about heartache, like every other song."

Ike narrows his eyebrows in the darkness.

"But it's also an allusion to the Bible. The idea of cutting hair is a reference to a Nazarite, of which Sampson _was_ one, who take a vow not to cut their hair, and—"

Kenny cuts him off.

"I know, I get it, real love is painful, 'it's not a cry in the night', nor is it all rainbows and sunshine. Sometimes it's a 'cold and broken hallelujah–

"Exactly, real love is just an illusion—"

"No dude, _you're_ just a pessimist. Just because you know all the biblical references doesn't mean you know the fucking song. It's a broken hallelujah but it's _still_ a fucking hallelujah. And I didn't forget that it was your favorite song, I just wanted to see if I could get you to sing it again."

It's Kenny's turn to take a deep breath. Kenny can't help but think of how Ike is beginning to remind him of Stan.

"Jesus dude, everything in the world doesn't _have_ to suck, it is what you fucking make of it."

Kenny finishes the sentence with such a sense of finality that Ike doesn't bother to continue the argument. Something about the way Kenny had said that last part makes Ike feel like a little kid, like he doesn't know his asshole from a hole in the wall.

This time the silence isn't comfortable; it's awkward and stilted and it makes Ike feel like maybe Kenny's right, and he should just go the fuck home and do his homework. It pisses him off so much when Kenny's right. Ike's smart enough to know that he's being ridiculous, and smart enough to realize when he's being pessimistic and broody. Still, doesn't mean you have to go around pointing it out and bursting people's bubbles and shit.

Ike's also smart enough that he's not really used to being outsmarted. So that pisses him off too. Fuck, Kenny's already like five hundred feet taller than him, can't Ike at least have the satisfaction of being _right_?

In the middle of fuming, between debating on whether or not to cause a scene and storm off, or just let it go and pretend it didn't happen, something brushes his hand. Instinctually, he freezes, because that's what Ike does when he's scared. Not great reflexes, Ike knows, and not that he's scared, either, just that, well—

Kenny's holding his hand. (In a totally non-gay way.) Ike's heart is pounding for some reason, and fuck, his hand must feel sweaty and disgusting. He doesn't really reciprocate the action (because that would be gay), just let's Kenny's fingers lightly entwine with his own.

Neither of them speak, and it's not a bad thing.

Kenny can feel Ike's nervousness—he's got a second sense about him when it comes to Ike, not to mention the fact that Ike's hand is sweating like a fucking pig. It's almost, cute, or something. Not cute like chicks or Hello Kitty or like kittens but just, it's Ike. Still though, Ike is nervous and Kenny feels a little bad because he knows that he's the source, so he ends the kid's misery, and turns to face him.

Ike tenses and almost jumps out of his skin.

Very slowly, and as melodramatically as possible, Kenny starts:

"You're, so, hypno-tizing."

Ike breaths a sigh of relief, forgetting completely that they're holding hands. Suddenly, he's relaxed again, and he figures that holding hands with Kenny in his truck late at night and arguing over the intended meaning of song will just become another one of those weird things that's just _them_.

"Could you be a devil, could you be an angel?"

Ike rolls his eyes, but sings along anyway. If he's going to sing a shitty Katy Perry song with anyone, it might as well be Kenny.


End file.
